(For the designers out there who aren’t interested in the game writing and design side of worldbuilding and aren’t relevant to your work, feel free to skip this post!)

I’m excited to share this guide by Kelly Bender, a narrative designer with 8 years in the industry! 

His work spans AAA, AA, mobile, and VR titles, including Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, The Walking Dead: Survivors, Age of Mythology: Retold, Dungeon Hunter IV, and the My Talking Tom brand. 

Beyond games, he has published over 40+ comic books, written a few screenplays, and published a children’s book.

This guide is a great resource for learning more about worldbuilding or a fresh take on creating immersive and cohesive settings.

You can read the full guide here - https://gamedesignskills.com/game-design/worldbuilding/ 

TL:DR:

Worldbuilding creates the fictional setting where a game's action occurs, influencing every story, character, and gameplay element within it.

Many first-time writers get fixated on coming up with settings, factions, geography, and aesthetics that are one hundred percent unique. 

• Originality is great but not a requirement many of the most beloved fantasy and science fiction settings are themselves blends from past inspirations. 

Worldbuilding for games is about creating a playground for the player rather than a set for a story.

• Players expect interaction with game elements and are quick to spot anything that lacks depth or functionality.
• In games, unlike novels or films, the cadence of discovery is partly controlled by the player, so the world must be designed to reveal information cohesively, no matter the order in which it’s explored.

Create motivations for every faction, race, and culture based on the world’s history to give every conflict or alliance an understandable and realistic foundation.

• Games like The Witcher 3 demonstrate how faction motivations and social hierarchies add layers of tension and complexity, turning characters into products of their environments.

Effective worldbuilding facilitates ‘interactive continuity,’ where players feel their actions impact the world around them, fostering a sense of player agency and deepening engagement.

• Interactive worldbuilding must account for mechanics, as seen in Doom Eternal, where geography, enemy placements, and environmental hazards are designed to support and challenge the player’s abilities.

Planning for future expansions or updates is key; a game world should be built to accommodate new areas, technologies, or powers without breaking the established lore.

• If your new content doesn’t feel like a natural extension of the world, players sense the dissonance, which can reduce engagement and trust.

Environmental storytelling—as shown in Fallout - adds silent narrative layers through objects, locations, allowing players to piece together backstories without explicit exposition.

Establishing constraints on magic, technology, and societal rules early on creates ‘rules of existence’ for your world, grounding the narrative and reducing the risk of arbitrary plot devices.

• You can apply D&D Dungeon Master’s “rule of cool” when deciding if player actions are possible or not. The idea is that if the action contributes to the story without breaking the fiction—allow it. 

The main goal of worldbuilding is to create such consistency that players forget they’re playing a game; when elements lack cohesion, players start questioning the fiction.

Kelly recommends to use these considerations when you start:

1. Where is your story taking place? If so, what period of time? 
2. How was this world/continent/city/space station/etc, formed? How long has it existed? 
3. What’s the main source of conflict and tension in this place? 
4. Who are the primary actors in this conflict?
5. Why are they in conflict with one another? 
6. When is the conflict happening?

Check out the full guide to get started on building worlds where players want to spend their time -  https://gamedesignskills.com/game-design/worldbuilding/

This is the V1 of the guide, so feel free to share if you have any feedback and I'll pass them along to Kelly.

I've worked with a small indie team on a smaller project in the past that unfortunately didn't see a full release, and one of the design decisions that I was particularly in support of was the use of scabbards and doing things like having the character move with the weapon in hand (like with a spear, holding it like people hold spears when they're not in use.)

It strikes me as odd how infrequent it is. It really stands out when the game does it right. Ghost of Tsushima is a somewhat recent example. The Souls titles also do a wonderful job of either using scabbards or having the character carry the weapon in a way that even if not totally realistic, at least makes sense.

Is there some kind of huge advantage in game design that I'm not understanding? Does it save all "that" much time and money to float them on the characters' backs? It's one of those details that's bothered me for years whenever I see it.

Im just looking for some nic etips and tricks to help me out in making a horror game

Hello everyone. I’m currently working on a platformer and was thinking about coins. I want them to be in there as a means of navigating and puzzle hints but feel they need to have a bit more of a role. I was wondering what games have creative uses for coins that go beyond a currency, extra lives, or points. My game won’t have lives in the default difficulty and there’s another collectible used as a currency so I thought I could get inspiration by learning about people’s favorite uses they’ve seen.

Thank you.

I think (and hope!) that y'all use a lot of Excel or excel-like programs for designing data. But do you also have that one special program/software that no one else/just some other designers use that helps you a lot when designing? 🤔

For me that special tool is Miro: a visual-heavy collaborative whiteboard tool. It's really great for ideating, mindmapping, and even progress/task tracking for yourself and even simultaniously with other designers. Maybe check it out if you are searching for something like that! 😊 (this is not an ad, just a recommendation)

Hi, I am a passionate gamer who currently works in finance doing developer/data science related work. Its super easy and I have lots of spare time.

I decided to try making games either my spare time and am absolutely loving it. My background in coding seemingly has given me a huge advantage because im flying through the material I am learning from random youtube playlists, etc. and really understand what im doing and not just copying code.

I wonder, if I want to make a go at working in the game industry, where should i go from here? I can continue to build my portfolio I know, but in terms of maybe getting a job in the field, say in 3 - 5 years, how can I best approach this?

I have 4 degrees (math, stats and finance all undergrad) and a masters in economics. But have 3 - 4 years experience working in a roles that either directly or indirectly require knowledge and skills in software development and data science, hence I am proficient in multiple programming languages.

I am not interested in going back to school unless theres some way I can do a part-time program (that is reputable, not looking for diploma mill). I understand all online programs are cheeks.

I live in Canada (Toronto). Thank you for any advice!

Context: In my game, you can get a variety of powers, one of which is momentum/acceleration manipulation,. With this power, the user can speed up and slow himself down, and by touching other things (including people), he can slow them down and speed them up. Also the movement in the game is very parkour based like you can vault, wall run, double jump, slide, etc normally without any powers, which is why I believe super speed would be fine if done correctly. Also we have a stamina barfor powers and a bar meant for rewarding good actions like hitting abilities or dodging abilities that goes down if you play badly and can be used for a variety of things that depend on the power. Finally the combat has blocking, melee(punches, and dashes.

Speedsters whole thing is going fast(and most of the time without much effort) so I want to make it where they can be fast pretty much the whole time. I want to find ways to balance it whilst also making it an interesting power and cool power to play as and to play against. The thing is though its just hard to make a balanced speed power that's fun for everyone, some ideas I had to balance it is the faster they're going the more damage(possibly aswell bigger hitbox not sure though) they take, and making a sudden or abrupt stop will make their feet slide for a sec before fulling coming to a stop(that leaves them vulnerable). Thats rlly all I have right now please leave suggestions and ideas.

I'm trying to figure out how to implement the game structure and rules of slot car racing, like how the cars drive around the track locked to a certain lane accurately, like autopilot. The only thing players have to focus on is accelerating and decelerating. However, I haven't found any guides or videos on how to do so. The only things that come up for me are tutorials on making a racing game, but not SLOT car racing. So I came here hoping for answers or sources to help me make slot car racing like Mario Party's Slot Car Derby mini-game!
I know a spline can help, but I don't see how a player can control their car on a spline AND switch between splines(lanes/slots) as they accelerate to mimic what it is like to race slot cars!

So my military game you have an option to use a strobe light flashlight on your gun and when you activate it it will disorient NPC enemies. However I noticed that this may also be harmful for people who suffer from epilepsy so I want to make an option to replace the strobe light effect while having the disorienting debuff status on enemies, but now the question is what type of effects should I replace it with?

The current ideas I have tried before were a slowly dimming and bright light I don't know if that's good? Idea is changing the color of light but that seems very disconnected to signal the player this is a strobe light, also the game may in future have different color flashlights in general for other things.

So need help with ideas that both give the idea to signal the player this is a strobe light while not being an actual strobe light?

I'm working on a tower defense game where enemy units have physical armor, magic armor, or none at all. There is also a debuff that can be applied by towers based on a percentage of damage dealt that can reduce physical or magical armor. Let's say the physical armor debuff is a Fire debuff.

The issue I'm hoping to have help with is that in the case of a tower dealing physical damage and dealing a percentage of their damage as Fire damage in the hopes of reducing the enemy unit's physical armor, on a unit with high physical armor their physical damage will be low, and hence the amount of armor reduction being applied will be low.

So while the player will be able to reduce enemy resistances with the debuff, it will never really have a chance to be applied in sufficient amounts due to the fact that the amount of the debuff applied is based off of how much damage is being dealt. I don't want to change debuffs to a cast or immediate application of something like "50% armor reduction for X seconds" because a core element of my game is this application through damage dealt.

I'm hoping for some suggestions or different thinking patterns around this potential issue. Here is what I've thought of so far:

1. Make the amount of debuff applied based off of the TRUE damage being dealt - ex: 100% damage is also dealt as a Fire debuff. 100 damage is applied to a unit with 50% damage reduction, instead of only applying 50 Fire stacks, we apply the full unmitigated damage of 100 fire stacks.

2. It isn't actually a problem and is something for the player to make meaningful decisions off of - perhaps giving towers that deal Magic damage which is unmitigated by physical armor the Fire damage, instead of giving it to towers that deal physical damage.

3. Change the Fire debuff to simply physical armor penetration - attacks will then always pierce a certain amount of armor. Downside I see to this is that a general physical armor reduction benefits ALL physical damage towers, whereas an armor pen buff on a single tower only benefits that tower.

Thanks!

It is a person giving their analysis of ff14 as a new player. I think the first half nitpicks but the main part I agree with starts at 4 minutes. The person discovers that the difficulty of the game is so low that they barely need to make any inputs. Do you think this is a fair take?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3LV-UV8RUY

For me this has put into words feelings that I've had for a long time. I played ff14 for 1000+ hours, but this isn't even about that specific game. I am seeing this design trend creep into pve multiplayer games (looter shooter/mmo) and even some single player games (cinematic big spectacle but not always).

The problem with no challenge

There is nothing wrong with easy games, some of the best games of all time are easy. The problem is when it is so absurdly easy, it becomes unengaging. Have you ever tried talking to someone and they ignore you? It feels disrespectful, like you don't matter.

Responsive gameplay is a smooth flowing conversation, when you are hit your hp bar goes down. It is a "punishment" yes, but more importantly it is feedback, it is the game responding to you. When games start you out at a point where enemies can barely even move your hp bar, I don't feel strong, I feel stupid. I don't know if I am doing good or bad because the feedback is all the same either way. It feels like the game might as well just play itself without me.

The excuses I hear and my thoughts

"These enemies are just fodder, so of course they are trivial"

• A core gameplay loop should be interesting, not boring. These problems are usually with the most common enemy types in the game and they are present onscreen in normal quantities, usually a few at a time. You usually focus on 1 at a time. Even if there are difficult enemies, you will spend most of your play time dealing with the common ones. Should most of your play time be unengaging? "Fodder" enemies belong in games like starcraft and dynasty warriors that have hundreds onscreen at a time.

"It gets good after 100 hours/endgame"

• If you actually made a good game, then why hide it in a bad one? Just get rid of the bad part and start players at the "endgame". I see developers put more design effort into endgame, but even the better ones are often a patchwork of mechanics trying to wrestle up some engaging gameplay from the weak foundation.

"Every other game is doing this"

• Some games can get lucky and be carried by their IP, but I think unengaging design still hurts them.

"We need to appeal to casual players"

• This is the worst one and I think it's a seriously messed up way to think about people. It's this belief that there is this huge group of people that are stupid, they want to be stupid, and they like being treated like they are stupid. In reality to hook casuals your game needs to be more engaging, not less. Casual gamers play Elden Ring. Elden Ring reached mass market appeal, literally the "casual market". A game that has none of the problems I have talked about, and generally viewed as challenging and skillful, a game that has plenty of easy enemies, but they are all engaging, responsive, and satisfying to fight. Even the dads with 7 jobs and 12 kids found the time to sit down and play the damn game.

What do you think? I hope to exchange some civil ideas if you have thought about this. Have you noticed this? Do you think it's from lazy design, cut down design budgets, developers forced to produce even without good design?

I thought it may interest some people to see the development of a card design over about a year. This is over the space of two separate games (one in TTS, one in Unity).

https://i.imgur.com/C3MEgZY.png

Version 1:

Was trying to create a design that allowed for large descriptions, that was something that held me back a bit when designing my board game. I felt it was too plain and not detailed but it was good enough to start testing. This design didn't last very long.

Version 2:

Figured out how to use AI to generate assets together. This design is about 20 AI assets and 2 paid for assets photoshopped to create a design I was happy with. I really wanted to have the cards facing eachother so thats why I had power and life at the top, so you could instantly match up the numbers without thinking (against opposing monsters), my game uses 5 (now 6) lanes and each monster will fight the one opposing it. This design lasted about 10 months and was used mostly in the TTS version of the game.

Version 3:

When working in Unity I couldn't find a good way to be able to see the cost of the card (in the centre) so I moved it to the top and the power and life to the bottom. This worked much better when fanning out the hand in Unity. This one lasted about 2 weeks.

Version 3.1:

This was just a fix up, I had broken an earlier asset and had no history of it but it was under the top right circle and I didn't have to worry about fixing it until this point.

Version 3.2:

This was a big change to remove the border because it marked the true disconnection between the physical card game + rules to digital. It's also not very noticeable on this screenshot but I had started working on making the text more visible by using multiple subtle drop shadows. This one lasted a month or so

Version 4:

Accidentally created a cool swirling effect messing around with photoshop filters and thought it was absolutely perfect for the card. I updated the circles and text to use it, it also let me put in a nice energy counter for the UI that made a lot more sense and fit more thematically. In addition, another break from physical card games, introduced a change to how the card looked when played on the board and introduced rarity (in the middle of the card). This has been recent and has been a week or so since introduced.

Version 4.1

Added new icons and changed the colour on the playable version.

Hopefully this gives some insight into design improvements over time! Would love feedback and further ideas!

Further notes:

• There are different visual effects for each condition on the board prefab. The equipment icon appears on the right when equipped and the one down the bottom appears if it has a passive/active action (glows if manually usable)

• Inspirations: Hearthstone heavily, PoR, StS, Monster Train

• I did try making the enemy life and power and player life and power next to eachother (players ontop of the circle, horde on bottom)... it sucked...

I had an idea that I suppose technically exists in a very old obscure multiplayer game (metal gear online2 from mgs4's mp) because you could stun or kill players and make them drop their primary weapon if you picked up and dropped them from being ko'd. it was always more arcadey and fast-paced at higher levels. but you could just knock people and take their guns leaving them useless for longer than if they just died and respawned. although you would piss off other players (easy to do in that community) and would get vote kicked frequently. but we are also talking about a community that would kick players for going after a capture objective if they weren't the last player left or there was more than 1 minute left in the round.

I like 3d camera action games, I like pvp. and I like mode like ctf and base capture, but every game is about killing other people first with the objective being just sort of an afterthought. after all, the enemy can't contest or participate if they're dead/respawning.

so what if killing wasn't the best solution? make respawn near instant or install other consequences for just shooting the other guy faster.

maybe we could expand on metal gears design, make an fps where injuring but not killing is high level play.

lower rank players could have a fast paced time. while higher skilled player will try to win by shooting hands and legs without doing too much damage to kill forcing you to do the objective while the enemy has a way to come at you constantly but in a limited capacity based on how good the other team is and vise versa. perhaps you could sneak up on someone and hitting them behind the head results in a 10 second knockout which is longer than a respawn, but you get back up right there, and your team could get you back into the fight quickly if they are nearby. maybe make ammo a limited resource that has to be used wisely with each life.

thats not to say killing is never a good decision, there might be parts of the match that removing someone completely right then and there is the difference between winning and losing. these are all just examples but my idea is more so an expression of skill and decision making.

yes I did post this in game ideas as well. I just want to spread my ideas to as many people as possible maybe someone out there could create the next big trend, or not, it doesn't matter, as long as its put there.

I'm currently trying to answer this question for my own game, but I think it's just a generally interesting question to ask. Some genres have a clear need for either a single character archetype (many puzzle games), or for a wide cast of playable characters (fighting games), but there's otherwise an interesting argument in either direction

Single character advantages:

-levels can be built around a single, unified moveset. This massively reduces the amount of play testing needed

-art and design team have reduced workload creating the large number of animations that many games push for. This is less of an issue for "low bit" NES style games (due to lower emphasis on animation) or for 3D model based games (where basic animation frameworks can be recycled), but it will always have some impact

-no risk of accidentally designating a secondary character to "padding", and also ensures there's a singular, clear protagonist to the story

-can make linear storytelling easier, since there's no question of how the player should shift between characters for storytelling

Multiple character advantages:

-each individual character can have a simpler, easier to learn moveset without reducing the overall gameplay options. This also makes it easier to fit a full moveset into an input map

-level assets can be more easily reused without becoming padding, as the unique abilities of each character change how a level can be interacted with

-small changes to gameplay focus can be made to prevent fatigue. For example, high octane combat stages for one character could be followed up by a slower paced, "investigative" gameplay for another, searching a level for information on where the first character should go next.

-multiple player characters can offer more in-depth storytelling, giving more information about the world and characters without needing to utilize lengthy exposition or "outsider POV" scenes.

I'm teaching an Intro to Game Design course where the assignment is basically "play 3-5 party/party-ish" games in a genre (deception, communication, cultural knowledge, etc.) and then prototype your own." It occurs to me that, while I have plenty of advice and examples for designing the rulesets—especially since the main advice is just "keep it teachable in under 60 seconds, avoid strategic decisions that aren't about the primary skill at play, and get out of your own way"—I don't have any overarching advice about creating the word lists or questions or etc. that may actually be the bulk of their iteration over the next few weeks. Other than some pretty good stuff about trivia in particular, that is—we read this GQ article on Jackbox, which emphasizes the value of building in multiple paths to success, and though it's been ages since I've read it, I remember there being some very good stuff along these lines in Ken Jennings's first book, Brainiac.

But that's also about trivia—what I really want is, like, a BGG Design Diary from Marie Cardouat where she details through the thought process behind the surreal-but-not-too-surreal-semi-ambiguity of every card in a new Dixit expansion like she's Donald X. Vaccarino. But that does not exist. Anyone have any suggestions for anything even tangentially along these lines?

So my game is a HUD-less first-person shooter, but realize sometimes can't tell if in crouch or if in sneak mode (sneak mode means slow walk as to make less sound so to stealth around enemies). I would prefer not to use a UI on HUD to tell and use something in the world to signal the player

Others methods is like if you are moving you would hear yourself walk softly or maybe bob head more, but after testing those it's annoying as you can't tell if in crouch state or sneak mode if just standing still, you have to move.

Currently copying Back 4 Blood method where crouch your hip fire gun is canted / diagonal a bit. but got nothing for sneak mode. Maybe should have the canted weapon for sneak mode and crouch dietetic feedback be something else?

Edit:

- just notice my title, rip autocorrect lol

- Also thanks for the replies with dietetic methods. I also do appreciate the 'out-of-box' thinking with methods that changed how the game plays overall removing the need for dietetic feedback.

At this point there's a graveyard of old game genres from the 80s, 90s, and 2000s that never made it out of the fad status or maybe still live on, but are very rare and niche (probably up for like 3 dollars on Steam).

I was wondering, which of these old, "dead" game genres you'd like to see a renaissance of?

An example is the resurrection of text-based adventures through visual novels.

For five years, I have been developing a tabletop style game, and it is getting quite close to the point where we are looking into mass production. We have always been under the idea that we would go to Kickstarter and crowd fund the mass production of our game.

Lately we have toyed with the idea that it might be more beneficial for us to create an online version of our game for a much cleaner experience than tabletop. However, we have no idea what steps to take in order to move forward with that idea.

Can anyone point me in the right direction or give some insight on what that process might look like? Are there companies that can take our game design, character cards and ideas and “code” it into an online platform? What sort of cost would that be, or is it more about partnering and selling a percentage of the company?

Any insight would be very helpful as we have no idea where to even begin, but feel that our game has a lot of potential to do well in an online platform.

Thank you!

So I've been playing Sekiro and been having a blast. While not open world, the exploration feels great, and it really scratches the itch that Ghost of Tsushima leaves you with. In fact the combat is honestly way better. I'm all for amazing and fluid animations, but give me mechanical freedom over that any day (Sekiro's animations aren't anything to scoff at either). Both games have a grappling hook mechanic, and while the pieces for making it a fun movement mechanic are there, in my opinion, neither game uses it to its fullest potential.

How would you flesh out grapple mechanics to truly be a parkour system, instead of just a ladder animation with extra steps? In Sekiro I think this can be done rather simply: combine the "swing across" and "latch to" grapple abilities so you can decide whether to anchor yourself to a point or use it to give you speed and distance. GoT also has that thing where you could either swing from or climb to a point, but not both. Sometimes this makes sense, in the case of points that are too small to be footholds, but other times it seems arbitrary and could be way more fun if you could just decide how you want to use the grapple instead of the game deciding for you.

In a hypothetical open world game that borrows heavily from both, grapple parkour could be a favorable alternative to just plain riding on a horse, especially in tightly packed urban areas or mountainous areas. It would also be great at giving a sense of mastery, knowing all the best grapple points to get across a space the fastest, perfect for chases or just speeding through the map.

I feel like a game that would have more fleshed out grapple mechanics should also make it more skill-based. In Sekiro grapples are a never-fail mechanic, the only fail-state being if you misjudge a jump and end up short of the next grapple point. In Ghost, the fail-state is included in only one type of grapple usage: when you mistime a jump during a swing. It's also super hard to actually fail, you have to really try to fail. I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to introduce fail-states though, short of plain old "momentum puzzles" where you have to judge the best point to let go of the grapple during a swing. Maybe take damage by splatting against a wall if you're too reckless with it? Or even "grapple point decay", making you wear down grapple points if you overuse them, requiring you to vary your routes or at least where you latch on and think quick if a grapple point breaks mid-swing, as sort of a way to keep things fresh even after you've mastered the map. Some grapple points might also decay faster than others, or instantly, like those disintegrating platforms in Mario.

I'm curious to hear about other ideas to make a grapple hook mechanic fun. I've never played the Arkham games but from what I've seen it's kinda just like Assassins Creed Syndicate where it's a "zoom to top of building" button, even though you can technically use it anywhere. Not really a fan of that, even in Dying Light which I adored. I've played the first PS4 Spider-Man and it's kinda too easy, and on the opposite end of the spectrum you've got the Attack on Titan fan games which have a pretty high skill floor. Did the older Spider-Man games use web-slinging in unexpectedly creative ways? Titanfall 2 has a great iteration of a grappling hook, but even that was kind of just a zoom and a swing that you can sort of manipulate the direction of with techs. In terms of variety of use cases, looks like Just Cause takes the cake, but idk if you can really swing with it or wrap it around stuff or other interesting physics crap like that.

As a hobby project, I'm working on a puzzle game for mobile (browser demo).

The whole game is built around one mechanic, which is sort of like a 2D Rubik's cube.

I've made a few levels for it, but I feel that there could be more to it than just predefined levels. I'm thinking things like an endless mode with procedurally generated puzzles, or maybe a time attack mode, or the ability to make your own puzzles and share with friends. Maybe some of you have good insights about how to wisely choose a direction by which to extend a game. Most of all, I'd like to increase appeal and replayability.

Any advice/ideas are very appreciated!

I have been working on a movement shooter for a little bit now. I feel like I've ran into a wall with the design though. My original plan made the level design super difficult and as I don't really have any skills within 3D art, it's difficult to find art that fits my game. What I'm asking is for help to shift my games focus to make it simpler to work on and to get over this hurdle.

Mechanics my game currently has:

• Ground slide (gives and keeps momentum)

• Crouching

• Standard momentum based movement

• Heavy shotgun with massive recoil (can be used for massive jumps or to gain speed)

So what I need help with is:

• What is this game about?
• Other references (especially for level design)
• Any ideas you can think of

Thanks in advance!

Hi there! My little brother called me today asking for help finding someone to interview for a school project. The project is to write an essay about the career field he is interested in and it must include an interview with someone who is/has been in the field.

My little brother has been interested in game design for years. He said, "A lot of the questions I have to ask are about someone who’s currently in/has been in a career in that field (about work environment, rate of pay, outlook, etc.)" It is due by October 31st.

If you are interested in helping out, please comment with some basic info about yourself regarding your career and I will message you to get you in contact with him!

Thank you!

I want to make a combat system by combining Undertales movement and earthbounds other stuff but I don't want to have it come off as a rip off

I'm designing a turned based tactics game with deck building. You are in command of an army through the means of your deck, each mission gives you a different army, around 5 pieces at the most, and sometimes multiple of the same. The enemies attack in a telegraphed manner, similar to Into The Breach. The only thing that you can take with between missions are your deck and currency. Therefor I very much want to avoid the idea of having unit specific cards and multiple decks. Right now theres a finite amount of mana to spend on playing your hand, although I'm open to remove mana. As predicted when going with this format I have a set of problems with this I'm trying to find unique design solutions for. Some of the problems I'm currently thinking about:

• Each unit has an attack, like a laser / ballistic / missile strike. How do i best activate attacks through a general attack card? One idea would be to have each unit belong to a class, and same with the cards, but that would mean that you would often have a hand of cards with no targets. Ideally I would like most cards on hand to be applicable every round.
• How do I ensure that there are enough cards to move pieces around on the map without half the deck being move cards? The most promising idea I can think of here is to have many cards that combine move / evade / counter / attack cards.
• What are some interesting cards that can create synergies related to the grid and other units, and can create deeper strategy without being too specific in what it does.

I know this is tricky but I'm positive that there are some solutions since its not a very explored theme yet.

Hey, everyone!

For those who played Managun Wizard, you know I tried some experimental mechanics, mainly manual reloading by hovering the pointer over the wizard and adding a delay before shooting. After discussions on Reddit, I found many players found these confusing. So, I’ve decided to switch to more familiar mechanics: now, you can shoot with LMB and reload your managun with the R key.

+++ Plus I've added an automatic reloading feature! If you run out of ammo, your managun will reload automatically after a few seconds. This should help in tough situations where maneuverability is more important than aiming.

The updated version is live on itch.io!

Link: https://valderson.itch.io/managun-wizard

Since I’m developing Managun Wizard solo, your suggestions are incredibly valuable. Honest feedback and wishlists help make the game better and speed up the process.

New features are coming — stay tuned!

Hello, I'm really new, I'm stuck in the prototype stage since I keep changing stuff and get too many ideas, I know is a common problem.Anyway I feel the need to have feedbacks from strangers since the people close to me are even too much supportive always saying "yeah it is good", so my basic idea was making my game around the idea of having a "main" map (kind of open, basically a city) and the protagonist object was to just gather resources (money for the rent, for plot reasons can't have normal job)and make other map of different styles with each one a different independent story (basically the game is about a unemployed dude wich get "isekai" in different situations, just an excuse for have a mission in a fantasy world and another in a sci-fi etc..).I'm not sure if having always different settings could be engaging or too dispersive (the basic idea would be have a game wich I can easily expand adding new chapters). Well thanks for the attention :)

Hello, new Friends! I am now interested in developing a 2D Stealth game, but I am still a beginner at this time. What books would you recommend to me to get some basic concepts of game design?

I am especially interested in learning "Game Design Vocabulary" at this time, like "Dynamic Difficulty", "DLSS", "TAA" and many others. I hope there will be a terminology list or something that allow me to have a basic understanding about concepts that I will need in designing games.

Thanks for your patience in Advance!

My game is turn based and deck building. I would like the user to be able to reset the round once per game and it would be nice if that feature could be built as a card somehow to require less UI clutter. It would probably go to the exhaust pile after you use it so its ones per game only, or perhaps more if you upgrade. However, if it only shows up randomly from the draw pile it would probably be pretty useless so im trying to come up with a sort of "sticky card" mechanic in which certain cards can be available always, can you think of a way or have you seen such a mechanic in other games?

Hey! Design problem here. This issue is not backed up by playtests just yet, but I figured I should use the knowledge of others before potentially misdirecting my time!

Just for broad context my game is a visual novel bartending game, of the likes of VA-11 HALL-A or Coffee talk, but it's 3D and in hell. In my game, outside of the main gameplay loop of serving drinks to customers, collecting blackmail and experiencing the main story, you can explore the city.

Though I haven't decided whether I should have the city signs (plus any in-universe things characters hand to you) to be in a fictional language, or just be in English/the localised language of the player. For more context, this fictional language is currently a relex of English, meaning it is functionally English but the symbols are different.

My current understanding of the possible pros and cons (again not informed by playtesting) is:

Pros:

• Fictional language is more immersive
• Promotes exploration, as you'll have to investigate and match letters on notes you receive to find locations, which could be rewarding
• 90% of the game's assets won't have to be localised!

Cons

• Could potentially alienate players since it's slightly uncomfortable being almost fully immersed in a language you can't immediately decipher
• Might break game flow, as if players don't immediately understand let's say, a flyer given to them by a character, they may not bother to look further into it and then miss out on content they would have otherwise interacted with.

I should say that I would provide a way to read and translate signs via a button prompt, which will feed into that exploratory aspect, and if the language was just a basic relex of English, English speakers could pick up on that and actually be able to read signs with some practice which could be a fun way and easy way to add a lot of easter eggs.

My thoughts:

I feel like it's one of those things non-indies couldn't risk doing, but something that maybe I should give it a shot. It's a bit experimental, but I think overall it could enhance the experience, and make players feel like this place is more real than pixels on the screen. Though Im sure I could do the same with everything in English! Suspension of disbelief and all!

I'm mostly into the fact that it could enhance the exploratory aspect of things, but it would be quite barebones. It wouldn't be a system where you collect words you've seen and can meticulously log everything, or keep signs translated once you've read them. It would purely be up to the player's own motivation to decipher things.

None of this affects the main story as the "language" will be encountered 90% out-of-bar.

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Anyways, I hope any design enthusiasts, professionals, or heck just gamers have any thoughts.

I've included images below for reference, so you can get a good idea.

FLYER IN ENGLISH

FLYER IN DEMON SPEAK (RELEX OF ENGLISH)

HOTEL SIGN IN DEMON SPEAK (Says \"ABYSSAL HEIGHTS | ho | tel\")

TL;DR

I want to add a fictional language to my game, most likely just a simple relex of English. Not sure whether its a good idea or not. Might add to the immersion and exploratory aspect, but could also detract from sheer readability, or alienate people.

I come from the fighting game community, I noticed that what made fighters pick up steam again at the time were thoses that felt extremely explosive and knew how to sell the tension of every match to the audience. (Like the slow motion in tekken when both player's health is low. And in most recent examples, guilty gear strive and sf6)

So knowing how everyone craves ultra hype, yet fair matches... WHY is nobody is trying to make a chess video game with a high budget treatment and polished visuals? I'm talking like... disgustingly polished visuals.

You could say it clashes with the tone and rythme of a game of chess but really, I've seen other games that had a very slow game loop and yet decided to go all in with the artistic direction.

I'm especially thinking of something like of "Yu-gi-oh Master Duel" where the game is just yu-gi-oh but the presentation is top notch with truly AMAZING music that changes depending on the state of the match, all the while, every move you make have explosive and satisfying visual effects that make you go "ow...".

I can't help but imagine how a chess game kind of in a free to play, game as a service format would look like.

Where you have a rank system, in depth guides, skill based matchmaking, clans and what not. a ton of custom boards, pawns and effects you could unlock or buy, etc...

It sounds goofy but idk, I feel like it could work to bring in a new audience that wouldn't have tried to approach pure chess normally.

Has it not been made yet because it's a bad idea? I can guess that for a serious playerbase, most players would want to not have those effects but you can just give them the choice to toggle them off. But for an extra casual audience, I'm sure it would be a great first impression of chess at large.

TL:DR : Why has nobody made a geniune chess game like how chess.com does it but with AAA tier visuals and presentation to reel in a new audience?